Animal Frenzy - Process of Creating an Animal - Part 1 Beginning

Animal Frenzy is our Key Stage 1 Group Project Game. Our aim for the game is to teach 5-7 year olds part of the National Curriculum for Science. This includes but not restricted to Animals and the Environment.

Over the next few posts I am going to describe the process we are taking in our creation of the Animals and how they will be animated. I will be using Adobe Illustrator to create the Vector and Adobe Flash for the Animation.



Click the Images to see the Full Picture!





We start our design process with a posed drawing of the character. This is really important so that you get a really nice feel of the character's personality and how they might act within the game. It is also important to have clearly drawn features and un-obstructed limbs - but in the case of the fox, it isn't difficult to imagine what the limbs will look like behind the tail.



When we have our drawing imported into Illustrator we need to Create a New Layer and Lock the layer with the drawing on. This is to prevent any chance of drawing on, or editing the original picture.






I will be using the Pen Tool for the majority of the drawing.
This tool is used to create Shapes that you then Tweak and Layer Up to complete a full image, or in our case an Animal Character.






A single click with the Pen Tool creates a point that when you single click again somewhere else, you create a Straight Line.






To get Curves in your lines, you need to Click and Drag with the Pen Tool. This will create Handles that you can then Tweak to change the Curve within the line.




The idea is to create Full Shapes that can then be used together with other shapes to make a full image. Try and avoid crossing the lines over as you will get some very messy results... Unless of course that is what you're looking for!

One more thing of note when using the Pen Tool is being able to move the Handle of your Next curve without deleting it (with the single click) or without deleting/editing the Handle to the Previous line.
This is done by pressing and holding the Alt key and dragging your Handle before you go to draw your next line. This allows you to have nice smooth curvy transitions into your next line without any sharp edges.

These are the very basics for using the Pen Tool. There are many other techniques you can use in your creation of a Vector image so I will explain them as and when I use them.


Continue to Part 2 - Head Base